Fishery Limits (United Kingdom) Bill [HL]

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 9:48 pm on 17 December 2003.

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Photo of The Earl of Erroll The Earl of Erroll Crossbench 9:48, 17 December 2003

My Lords, I welcome the Bill and thank my noble friend Lady Saltoun for introducing it. It contains important principles. The first has concerned me for a long time: we cannot apply processes that might work if the world were a simple place to a complex network of human relationships and expect to obtain the consequences we want. That sounds complicated, but process-driven thinking has completely failed in this area. We must start motivating people to do what is needed. There is a huge conservation issue. The Bill is important because it affects both communities and the environment.

If we want to protect something, we need to give the people who use it ownership of it. Then they will want to protect it for the future. Once we have destroyed the habitat or the stocks, we cannot recreate them. People's livelihoods are at risk. Much local industry is dependent on fishing—perhaps I should say that there is a little left. Local businesses and communities are dependent on it. When we have destroyed them, what regeneration schemes will we try to put in place when they know nothing else?

The Bill gives British fishermen a stake in their own future, because they will feel and know that their children will benefit from their restraint. With luck, they will stop over-fishing. If one feels that one is passing something on to one's own flesh and blood or one's community, one does something about it. That worked well with the cod recovery in either Iceland or Greenland. People who know more than myself will talk about that. People will even invest in the industry.

In the south-west there was an initiative to reintroduce lobsters where they had been over-fished. That went well. If people cannot protect that, there is no point in such initiatives. If, suddenly, strangers and foreigners can come and raid what people feel is their own property, there is no point in investing in the future. But if one gives them ownership, they will defend that. The Bill is important because it starts to move in the correct direction. Instead of having many rules that do not work, because people will always find another way of interpreting them, one should begin to motivate people properly to look after their future.